| Show THE RUINS OF Den derah and the of the ancl ancients outs is sup supposed posea to be one and the same in search of its ruins one notices first as aa in all egyptian ruins a huge mound of earth fragments of brick pottery bones ashes etc climbing upon this pile of debris beholds in various directions SAWS gaw remains of pro phyla and crumbled adobe walls which however upon the surface look like mere banks of earth and dust and which are probably to be ascribed to that epoch when the population of had so shrunk that its inhabitants for convenience and more efficient defense built their houses within the walls of the temple in closures enclosures cropping out of the mound here and there several mall temples are visible and in their midst the great fane of isis at least anti antiquaries antiqua quarles ries claim that this beautiful structure was dedicated to that goddel god debs in size the ruins of Den derah are much inferior to those of karnak louisor or orEd fou there are striking exam ples pies of sumptuousness in architecture and elegance grace precision variety of ornament in the sculptured hieroglyphics and in the exquisite sculpture lavished upon the female figures or of the chief temple which are so extremely well executed that one author dr richardson says they do all but speak and have a mildness of feature and expression that never was surpassed this temple to is the finest in all egypt A approaching the temple we notice first of till all that elegant egyptian devices devic eythe the winged globe painted in strong col color sand arsand which incessantly brings to mind the sublime phrase of scripture the arbe sun of righteousness shall rise e with healing in his wings especially as it is gracefully poised aloft ou on a blue ground as if in the azure sky the centuries which have elapsed have scar scarcely eely affected the magnificence ence of this beautiful temple we descend a short ashert flight of stairs as the floor of the temple is below the present level of the surrounding coun enter the portico forty two feet high here we are in the midst of twenty four columns in three rows each column above twenty two feet in el circumference upon which are carved hieroglyphics however when one has circumscribed ten or of a dozen columns an impression is formed that these holy carvings represent a ritual confession of faith Joi 01 litany after having listened to frequent catholic litanies the manifold le ie iterations of kyrie eleison of the greeks and the allah akhtar god is created which I 1 have heard fifty and even one hundred arabs repeat two hundred and three hundred times in an hour bowing each time or vociferating god is god and mohammed is the apostle of god and noticing now in this temple the emblems of isis and osiris alternating with car touches snakes the emblems of wisdom and Egypt egyptian iRn vultures emblems of mot motherly berly love and protection tec tion one feels like interpreting the characters about thus abe catbe gods are a re eternal osiris is wise his hia spirit will guide our souls 0 isis show mercy have compassion upon us and so on scores of each column and there are twenty four of such the top of each olumn is surrounded by the sculptured face of isis each column having four faces one to each cardinal point which design is called technically isis on the ceiling of the portico is a zodiac to which I 1 will refer later the or inner court of the temple has many rooms or apartments the walls of which are adorned with figures relating to religion and astronomy these rooms are lighted by small perpendicular holes cut through the immense flags of which the flat roof is constructed straight ahead is the sanctuary or holy of holies to which there is only one entrance across which probably once hung a costly curtain or veil richly embroidered broi dered with representations of idols many of ibe he i arrangements remind one of the bible description of the tabernacle and temple of jerusalem a small apartment a corridor we ascend a night flight of a hundred or more low broad comfortable for table steps we are now in a shaft of small inclination as if in the solid rock roch as the joints are very neat gerej here I 1 imagine the high priest after exacting a covenant from the worshipers slowly mounts the stairs followed by shaven headed priests who chant moncton bously to the tune of cymbals and harps carrying offerings of globes en encircled with snakes or cows horns lotus flowers little boats graduated sticks mitred kitred cobras cabras etc at earb I 1 gather this idea from the representations on the walls of this noble stair gallery next I 1 see them on the roof under the open heaven dedicating unto the their labors and the offerings they are about to make by fire waving perfume or sprinkling rhe rest of the tale we read in amah chambers on the roof where males and females allow themselves to be blessed bound and have knives driven luto their foreheads shoulders breasts bowels and thighs animals too are butchered and piled upon altars then 1 presume the offerings were offered to the deities after being burned roasted or sod sodden denand and the vegetables sprinkled on another corner of the roof is a miniature temple twenty feet square the architraves archi traves are au supported sported by sol colu u m cans ns su surmounted reou nt by isis this small email temple it has bas been suggested was the repository of books astronomical instruments and was also the observatory gerv atory this defective description I 1 am making after my second visit to the temple luring during which the feast of hassan add hussein was being celebrated some miles away there was no guide or guardian to annoy me with his many bombastic explanations and so I 1 examined the grand ruins thoroughly spending also some hours in small favrow mysterious underground pas passages saes was I 1 in the secret cham chambers to which the new test teat ment ament refers were these the laboratories where sacred crocodiles bulk and ibis were embalmed embalm ed or like the of the bastile Ba atile were these perhaps dungeons where victims of priestly rage after being coaxed into the temple were thrown to be forgotten forever in the upper walls also small galleries three feet re by ten to fifteen long have been reserved in the walls wails concealed skillfully fully by stones sliding in gro grooves oyes and ornamented like the others bothers and m re over cut in such shape that it see tie ns a marvel the modern explorers ever discovered the entrances as toe lock or keystones key stones when adjusted hardly admit sk a knitting needle in the joints I 1 looked upon these smaller galleries as places in which to store the sacred and precious things of the temple in one of the upper rooms was a circular zodiac which has since been carried to paris and is supposed to be a masterpiece of pictorial astronomy but I 1 suppose that if the french could have taken away the immense zodiac on the ceiling of the portico this would have obtained a much greater reputation than the one at paris I 1 have seen both the roof of the portico has to the west ten slabs or flags about sixteen feet long by two and a half broad to the east likewise Inthe in the centre are twenty similar nilar flags it in two rows ornamented with various emblems having no direct cothel connection with the zodiac now as to the zodiac some readers of th NEWS will be rather surprised to t le learn irn that those strange little figures fugures let us say in hi ayers eating cating the constellations through which the moon sails in the heavens should have originated in egypt thousands of years ago yes even to the human fl figure ure against the various parts 01 of whose body and limbs limbe are disposed the twelve not pictures but truly egyptian hieroglyphics beginning at the eastern side of the temple we have a large male figure bending around three sides of the coiling ceiling panel in front of him are two rows of figures the row nearest to him contains a or zodiacal representation of the constellations stel lations of the boreal or northern heavenly hemisphere beginning at his chin we see aquarius Aau arius a man pouring out water next places pisces a pair of f nice fishes the third figure instead of being the orthodox aries is a beautiful antelope or gazelle in a natural pose taurus in iii this zodiac is a roaring bull pawing the earth bending his head down clown and tossing the moon along on her monthly rounds next instead of gemini naked twins we see the god ra ba and his companion and scribe with a pen or feather on his head they walk hand in hand band like twins cancer or the crab I 1 cannot see on this zodiac but I 1 did not copy amiss there is instead of the crab a boal with persons in it doing something I 1 cannot make out as the ceiling here is full of soot boot capricorn us scorpio libia and leo are made precisely as we re presort them now a days sagittarius which I 1 skipped is instead of a common bowman bow man or archer represented by a beautiful winged centaur from egypt the greeks got the idea ot of their wingless centaur I 1 suppose and when I 1 say I 1 suppose I 1 ought to say I 1 contend for there ure shallow and superficial books on mythology which state that the centaur is a conception of greek mythology this thiel I 1 think is entirely for let when as yet the greeks did not exist the egyptians and chinese had made much progress in astronomy and hd recorded many cycles eclipses and periodical comets 2nd and when the greeks were mere barbarians living on roasted acorns and wild olives having as yet arranged no mythology neither understanding agriculture even to the extent of planting wheat etu etc the egyptians were a poll polished shea nation having legions of soldiers armed with bow and arrow and that too when the babylonians syrians assyrians As and Per persians stalls used short spears swords and javelins 3rd ard at this same time the Egypt egyptians Aane had already many colossal ephy sphinxes axes and andro and anyone who has seen egyptian hieroglyphics will have noticed that nothing is more natural to the egyptian genius than the compounding of figures of animals and human beings such as the centaur a horse with wings being a heavenly horse favl having ng the of a man that is I 1 the upper half of a mans body 1 I should not be surprised after all if some savant archabold gist should declare that this is the egyptian god mars the eleventh figure of this zodiac corresponds to the virgin virgo but instead of a virgin we find a hydra or monster serpent coiled over and over here there seems to be a wide discrepancy bear in mind first of all that the abbreviated sign of the scorpion is an italic m having a spear headed tail that is the cursive or hier hieratic atle egyptian rendering of the picture of a scorpion in like manner the hydra was rendered hieratically by a figure not unlike a combined italic mv mx next the Egypt egyptians iaus as a nation dwindled completely and the catholic monks had the monopoly of the scanty astronomy which survived and this probably bably suggested to them maria virgine Vir gioe and thus the viro virgo crept into the zodiac we will now leave and all they suggest to the mind and cross the nile back to deneh and witness the noise and confusion of a modern egyptian erfort that hat matter of A TYPICAL ORIENTAL FETE namely that of hassan haman and hassain the brutal manner in which a certain Mabom sect does penance for the death of these two martyrs the way vay in which a whole procession inflicts wounds upon themselves until through loss of blood they faint away and other sights of a similar nature were some time ago very vividly described by elder J clove who wIt witnessed Hessed the proceedings at constantinople this town at present has perhaps ten times its normal population the strangers or visitors camp on the roofs in the streets and in tile the fields half a mile all around town some in tents and some in the burning sunshine to get to the fair grounds we pass through a throng 0 of native egyptians fell fellah abID in from distant rural districts nubians Nub ians ethiopians and from the upper nile country arabians from yemen jedda and mecca pilgrims from morocco algiers tripoli Lri pOli tunis turkey and the oasis who nave either hastened bast ened or delayed their trip to meet mecia a so as to witness this feast they all differ in dress and dialect but cherish one another as brethren for the sake of the best prophet I 1 might describe a thousand things but will confine myself to a few through a cloud of dust painful to eye and lung and through a throng of swarthy mortals prancing horses bray braying asses and I 1 loping camels we proceed to the grand square however is not a square but a graveyard full of tall tail shapely mausoleums sepulchres chres and tombs the pedestrians must ever le on the lookout for life an limb fur for the effend dis Is qualis auau is beys or pashas on horse or camel have the right of way and are amenable to no one in case of through this long gowned turbaned ned crowd and in the midst of thousands of veiled women we slowly wend our way through a din and clatter hard to describe we are surrounded by howling bowling and dancing dervishes nodding dervishes dervishes who repeat the litany of waw clapping their breasts or cheeks at each alternate word until they are red and swollen here is a gang of dervishes who in the name of mahammed and with tam bordine and cymbals work up tip the zeal of self mutilating dervishes who when sufficiently wrought up slowly insert blades of cold steel iron spits spite and long needles through the muscles of the abdomen chest arms and through the forehead the cheeks and the ears and all allaer for a few paltry copper coins looking at till all this we become dizzy aud and we march on trying to observe other things we notice the buildings which have been improvised for the occasion in this graveyard many of the squalid tabernacles are made of reeds corn stalks stalks of jura dura maize palm leaves and also of acacia mimosa Nilo tica branches in which case mats of barley straw are resorted to to furnish a complete awning or shade then we come to shanties made of broken boards and rags next to low broad tents of goats goatse and camels wool then to something like immense cart wheels on the end ed of a pole upon the wheel a mat or gunney sack is spread it is a sort of immense parasol next we reach a shebang made of cracked jars together with slime and dung then come low dingy hovels cabins huts etc at last we reach the DANCING OR OB AT EHO whose style of contortions has received the sanction of thousands of years as is attested by vivid representations of their terpsichorean movements attitudes and poses upon some of the sacred and most ancient monuments of the nile country yet as I 1 do so would the reader look upon the their ir art as more rude than pleasing pig more labor laborious lobs than artistic more like a peculiar mode of gymnastic than dance and I 1 in all more weird bizarre and uncommon than interesting however a short explanation is necessary whereby to elucidate a description further on relating to a cruel manner in which arabian steeds are made to imitate these girls let us consider one she is chastely dressed be decked with two hundred gold coins worth in all her ear earrings earnings Tings are of massive gold on her ankles above her bare feet are two heavy silver ank lets around her wrists are bracelets of gold silver and many of cut glass which tinkle merrily when she moves her arms in graceful dul atory movements as though imitating a snake gliding over the water in her left hand band is now a long rod when the music has abated a little she walks along hurriedly swaying herself tinkling small cymbala fastened to her hands and bobbing with her head continually as a snake does when captivated by sweet strains of a flute or fife when the music grows more |
